What tool have you bought, thinking you'd use it all the time?

The MEAT GRINDER (hurray) has been seeing heavy usage since christmas.

Also, my parents got me a very nice electric skillet one year, but its heating element is either on or off, so if you set it to a particular temperature, it's either boiling away like a madman or cooling off from same. No steady simmer possible.

I got a nice nonstick saucepan with a tight fitting lid that has made me set aside my rice steamer — I haven't touched it in about a year now.

I have a simple plain ol' saucepan with good lid I can make perfect absorption method rice in. I got a rice cooker, and the rice was drier, stuck more (even with nonstick insert) and eventually the teflon started actually coming off and going into the rice ew ew no thanks.

Went back to my trusty saucepan.

The real problem is that pasta is insanely cheap.

aldo: It's probably worth pointing out to people thinking the pasta rack helps that I have made pasta exactly once since making that post.

Vindicated! Pasta maker stays in cupboard forever! (this weekend, I intend to make some sort of ravioli-type thing to prove myself and this thread wrong, but I probably won't)

We've got a juicer too that just sort of sits there, looking like it should be getting used. This is the reason we never got the ice-cream maker or bread-maker I really wanted last year either.

are you my husband? ;-)

HAs anyone bought a bread maker? If so, good or bad? I"m very tempted even though I'm not that big if a bread lover. Silly I know, but I love machines. I'm a kraftwerkian cookah.

I know it's pretty cool on TV but most of the veggies I tend to chop up are not appropriate for it eg bok choi, spring onions, broccolli, capsicum.
When I am using it for something appropriate such as tomatoes and onions, I tend to find it's pretty crap when it reaches the last few centimetres.

I got an actual blowtorch for my birthday and I'm fearful of it. Need to practice outside a few times.

Have also had a sodastream carbonator for at least 4 years. It took 3.5 years to get through 1 bottle of CO2. But since I've discovered the excellence of bitters and soda, we've blasted through 1 every 2 months.

Blowtorches are great! Nothing better than melting cheese on French onion soup with one.

I don't use my Cuisinart as much as I did once but I mean it is still a nice thing to have when you need it. There are a lot of tools that I bought that I really wanted that I secretly deep down was worried that I wouldn't actually use all that much but still use pretty regularly (kitchen scale, thermometer, Aeropress)

I really don't like my Kitchenaid mixer. I've all but stopped making bread because it's such a pain to use. I'm going to put an ad in the local shopper to sell it and my Ronco rotisserie.

Also I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that Jaq wd be at all trepidatious abt any kitchen related tool whatsoever; like I imagine her picking up the most estoeric and intimidating and mysterious of devices and just being all "okay sit down y'all I got this" and then making a souffle come out of it.

xp I guess you really took the "and forget it" part to heart

I want to up my sous vide meat game with it, ShariVari.

I also bought this spiral slicer thing recently - used it to make zucchini into noodles last night. It's great fun, but the suction feet aren't the best so it took two of us to manage. Trying sweet potatoes today with it!

Stevie, I'm wondering if I'll go back to the Aeropress now I've figured out cold brew. Makes me wistful. My kitchen scale and thermometer get pretty constant use. Waffle iron, cast iron bacon press, popover pan, double baguette pan - haven't used once in two years.

hahaha

xp and xxp

We use our waffle iron pretty regularly. The blueberries are starting to come in at my mother's house, and we still have loads from last year, so I turned a quart of frozen berries into a compote to go over waffles for breakfast yesterday.

Hah! Stevie, I had a welding incident many years ago that ended up in singed off eyebrows (not mine, but I felt SO GUILTY). I think it is still haunting me.

Can you cold-brew in the Aeropress??? How would that work? I am so intrigued! I have never fucked w/ cold brew apart from purchasing it at coffee shops and being all OMG THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD

I do loooooove using my Aeropress for iced coffee though, which is why I bought it in the first place and then loved it so much that I became a near-daily morning hot coffee drinker (which I have never rly been! Thx Aeropress I guess)

At home I have a pressure cooker that I used once when I first got it, and never again. When we rented our current join in Mexico it came with a pressure cooker, and I'm all "yeah, so not gonna happen." Then I learned that you can't just buy a can of garbanzos or black beans or whatever--ALL of the beanies are dried. Out came the pressure cooker, which has worked a treat even though the jiggler never does what it is supposed to do.

Oh! That's another I got a few months ago and have never used - a pressure cooker. It's very shiny, might just stay that way.

Stevie, you can do cold brew with just a mason jar and a melitta single cup brewer! I got a fancy beautiful japanese cold brewer then realized I didn't actually need it. But I still use it. Anyway, grind your beans medium coarse, using about 3/4 cup for a 1 quart mason jar. Put the grounds in the jar and fill with cool filtered water slowly - stir with a chopstick or something to make sure everything is evenly wet. Put the lid on and let it sit somewhere cool (on the counter is fine if the house temp is not more than 75 F, otherwise the fridge) for 24 hours. Filter into another mason jar or lidded vessel for storage. This is the part that takes awhile. You could probably put the grounds in a nut milk bag instead so you wouldn't have to filter out so many.

This is the gorgeous cold brew thing I got

I was abt to be all OMG THAT'S SO MUCH COFFEE but it comes out to be 3T per 8oz of water which really is not that bad! Do you shake! shake! shake! it every once in a while or just let it sit?

Also do you have any personal recs for what type of roasts/origins/etc work best for cold brews? Or like what's yr favorite coffee from Trader Joes?

also I bet the Aeropress w/ metal disc (that the wonderful ABBOTT mailed me; thank you so much ABBOTT!!) would work quite wonderfully for the final filter

yeah, and you dilute the cold concentrate around 1:1 with water if you want hot coffee. I just let it sit. Haven't tried any TJs coffees in a long time - I've currently just got a giant bag of Costco house roast which does me fine. I'm more about the caffeine than the nuances, but I do like considerable body and caramelly roastiness.

Great idea on the aeropress as filter! I'm going to try that with a paper one and see how it goes.

I have not used either the coffee machine, pasta maker or dryer since I complained about them 8 years ago, or the ice cream maker since I complained about it 7 years ago.

Now I have a kitchen of a better size and layout I intend to rectify this, but I said that over half a decade ago. :-/

Food dehydrator

i didn't even realize that this was on ILC but it's true that kitchen tools are the ones most likely to be used only once a year. i have a madeleine pan that i've only used a few times.

i'm really good at not buying kitchen tools I won't use. Maybe the "good" vegetable peeler, but that was just because I found it less comfortable to use and slower than the crappy one.

I bought an oxo slicer that turns out to have been one of their few dud products. Great design, except for the blade assembly, which doesn't work all that well. They've since redesigned it :/

this is the style vegetable peeler I bought:

http://2021supernormal.files.wordpress.com/2006/10/vegetable-peeler.JPG

maybe I'm challenged, but I can't find an efficient way to use it

my hand hurts just looking at that

I saw a sous chef on Iron Chef mangle his/her hand with one of those once -- I'll pass.

i think the u-shaped ones are better than the toothbrush looking ones

but they have to be big oblongs like cukes or eggs

rubber handle bit might be nice

finally bought a nice stovetop waffle iron. wanted one for years and finally broke out. got a nordic ware for $40 and it's built like a tank and i expect it to last forever. used it for the first time today and while the batter was a bit of a production (melting butter, whipping egg whites) they sure were a lovely vehicle for loads of maple syrup